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Actors:Jim Broadbent, Ray Cooper (II), Robert De Niro, John Flanagan, ...
Brazil
by Universal Studios (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-03-31)

If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly branding poor Sam as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly imaginative and savage vision of 20th-century bureaucracy that it almost became a victim of small-minded studio management itself--until Gilliam surreptitiously screened his cut for the ...

Actors:William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid, ...
Altered States
by Warner Home Video (DVD) (Release Date: 2004-06-01)

It's easy to understand why the late, great screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky removed his name from the credits of Altered States and substituted the pseudonym Sidney Aaron. After all, Chayefsky was a revered dramatist whose original source novel was intended as a serious exploration of altered consciousness, inspired by the immersion-tank experiments of Dr. John Lilly in the 1970s. In the hands of maverick director Ken Russell, however, Altered States became a full-on sensory assault, using symbolic imagery and mind- blowing special effects to depict one man's physical and hallucinatory journey through the entire history of human evolution. It's a brazenly silly film redeemed by its intellectual ambition--a dazzling extravaganza that's in love with science and scientists, and eagerly willing to dive off the precipice of rationality to explore uncharted regions of mind, body, and spirit. William Hurt made his bold film debut as the psycho-physiologist who plays guinea pig to his own ...

Actors:William Bagdad, Timothy Carey, Carol Doda, Micky Dolenz, ...
The Monkees - Head
by Rhino Theatrical (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-07-21)

Actors:Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, Otto von Wernherr, ...
Liquid Sky
by Telavista (DVD) (Release Date: 2000-02-15)

Actors:Bob Geldof, Christine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David, ...
Pink Floyd - The Wall
by Sony (DVD) (Release Date: 1999-12-02)

By any rational measure, Alan Parker's cinematic interpretation of Pink Floyd: The Wall is a glorious failure. Glorious because its imagery is hypnotically striking, frequently resonant, and superbly photographed by the gifted cinematographer Peter Biziou. And a failure because the entire exercise is hopelessly dour, loyal to the bleak themes and psychological torment of Roger Waters's great musical opus, and yet utterly devoid of the humor that Waters certainly found in his own material. Any attempt to visualize The Wall would be fraught with artistic danger, and Parker succumbs to his own self-importance, creating a film that's as fascinating as it is flawed. The film is, for better and worse, the fruit of three artists in conflict--Parker indulging himself, and Waters in league with designer Gerald Scarfe, whose brilliant animated sequences suggest that he should have directed and animated this film in its entirety. Fortunately, this clash of talent and ego does not prevent ...

Actors:Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, ...
Brazil - Criterion Collection
by Criterion (DVD) (Release Date: 1999-07-13)

If Franz Kafka had been an animator and film director--oh, and a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus--this is the sort of outrageously dystopian satire one could easily imagine him making. However, Brazil was made by Terry Gilliam, who is all of the above except, of course, Franz Kafka. Be that as it may, Gilliam sure captures the paranoid-subversive spirit of Kafka's The Trial (along with his own Python animation) in this bureaucratic nightmare-comedy about a meek governmental clerk named Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) whose life is destroyed by a simple bug. Not a software bug, a real bug (no doubt related to Kafka's famous Metamorphosis insect) that gets smooshed in a printer and causes a typographical error unjustly identifying an innocent citizen, one Mr. Buttle, as suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro). When Sam becomes enmeshed in unraveling this bureaucratic glitch, he himself winds up labeled as a miscreant. The movie presents such an unrelentingly ...

Actors:Alexis (XI), Jan Carson, George Claydon, Ivor Cutler, ...
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
by Mpi Home Video (DVD) (Release Date: 1997-11-12)

This 1968 oddity is probably a film only a total Beatlemaniac could love, but it carries both musical and historical resonance. It also gives intimations of what would happen in the next 30 years as artists gained more and more power over how they were presented. The roots of virtually any rock star's vanity project (including Prince's Under the Cherry Moon) can be traced to this little Liverpudlian home movie. Fresh from the success of their films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, and still under the influence of the intoxicants of the era, the Beatles set out to make their own fancifully psychedelic project. What they got out of it was, essentially, a knock-off album with a few good songs and a lot of filler, which is more than can be said for this alternately self-indulgent and mildly amusing British version of Ken Kesey's magic bus tour. Using some of their favorite actors (including Victor Spinetti, who was in their first two movies), the Beatles make an alternative ...

Actors:Dorothy Short, Kenneth Craig, Lillian Miles, Dave O'Brien, ...
Reefer Madness
by Motion Picture Ventures (DVD) (Release Date: 1998-07-07)

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